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After a long period, the agrarian
question or the peasant question has once again come to the fore. The agrarian
crisis and the left decline in rural areas make it imperative to have a look on
agrarian relations. In the great Indian academic debate on peasant question in
the 1960s and 1970s which is known as ‘mode of production debate’, there was no
unanimity of opinions. The Naxalbari peasant upsurge vindicated the stand of
the section of left who severed ties with mainstream left and formed CPIML
declaring the Indian state character as semi-feudal and semi-colonial. This characterization
was in consonance with the Mao’s formulation of ‘erosion and retention’ of
feudal relation in the era of imperialism and semi-colonial settings. The
Naxalbari upsurge actually happened in the backdrop of a phase of class
struggle that was unleashed during that period in the Indian agricultural
sector. The question arises what happened to the agrarian relations of production
after this phase of class struggle. Did this phase mark the beginning of
gradual transition of feudalism to capitalism from below as it happened in
France? The question also arises whether the continuation of same strategy
followed by the CPIML groups in the rural areas post-Naxalbari upsurge has any
bearing on the shrinking mass base.

There was a dichotomy in
political culture of a section of congress leadership who having emerged from landed
gentry inherited the feudal interest, but at the
same time imbibed modern outlook through freedom struggle and also through the
process of post-independence constitutional republican state formations

Indian state tried to introduce capitalism from above through
half-hearted attempt of Land reform in the period of planned economy. K
Venkatasubramanian, fromer member of planning commission, referred Joshi’s
following observation in his article “Land reforms remained an unfinished
business”.

“Land reforms in India have not assumed the form of gigantic
revolutionary upheaval as in China, or that of a dramatic change brought about
from above as in Japan. But from this to jump to the conclusion that the land
reform programme has been a hoax or total fiasco is to substitute assertion for
a detailed empirical examination. India has also witnessed important changes in
the agrarian structure, which have gone unnoticed because of the absence of
down-to-earth approach in assessing these changes.”

Land reforms were given a top priority in policy agenda to ensure social
justice and augment agricultural growth by optimum utilization of small
holdings. From 1960s green revolution technology backed by subsidized credit,
fertilizer was introduced. Later, other inputs were introduced in the
water-rich regions for food crops from the 1980s. After the phase of intense
agrarian class struggle which culminated into Naxalbari upheaval, national
guidelines were issued in 1972, which specified the land ceiling limit.

As per the observation of Daniel Thorner, the American Historian, who initiated
the Indian mode of production debate, the big business in India in late 1960s and
early 1970s was campaigning for an open door policy of free entry into
agricultural production. The house of Birlas took the lead in demanding a shift
in Government policy away from cooperative farming, which failed to make any
headway worth noting, towards corporate farming. The former Prime Minister,
Indira Gandhi, emphasized “Land reform is the most crucial test which our
political system must pass in order to survive”. (LAND REFORMS REMAIN AN UNFINISHED BUSINESS'K.
Venkatasubramanian Planning commission, GoI, Site).

This shift of political balance within the congress to serve the
corporate interest as against the feudal interest was visible in the early seventies.
It is worth-mentioning here that the global capitalism also entered into
systemic crisis just before the advent of that period of intense agrarian class
struggle and was desperately searching for profitable destination for
investment. The interest of corporate capital for making further deep inroads
into the Indian agricultural sector was drawn by the presence of wage labourers
along with a reserve army of labourers and the commodity production for market as
the dominant features in the agricultural sector instead of subsistence
cultivation. The forces for rapid transition to agrarian capitalist relations
had taken the driving seat both politically and economically from that period.

After more than three decades of neoliberal globalization of capital, the
corporate food regime dispossesses peasants as a condition of corporate
agriculture, what Harvey terms as ‘accumulation by dispossession’. Massive
acquisition of agricultural land by multinational corporations for
non-agricultural purposes and increasing privatization of natural resources
introduced new patterns of urbanization and industrialization. The increasing
control of agribusiness over input and output flows of agriculture indicated a
massive debouching of workforce from the farm sector.

When the agrarian question is revisited after three decades of
neoliberal policy drive, the convergence of opinion among the academicians on
the broad canvass of delineating the Indian agrarian relation as capitalist has
been emerging. The penetration of corporate capital and accumulation of surplus
thereof by global corporate giant through the value chain restrained the
re-investment of capital by both landlord capitalist and peasant capitalist in
the agricultural sectors and thus delinking of the peasant economy from global
corporate control is essential to serve the interest of these agrarian classes.
From the point of view of labour, there are regional and community variants.
The formal, real and hybrid forms of subsumption of labour to capital fit to
these unevenness of capitalist development.

The nature of agrarian relations in India is bound to reflect the
external neoliberal influences as much as the internal historical
specificities. The diversities in the agrarian relation of production ingrained
in the labour process can be conceived from formal, real and hybrid forms of
subsumption of labour to capital.

The primitive accumulation drive of the global corporate capital and the
distress situation in agricultural economy are continuously converting the displaced
peasants into wage labourers for their subsistence with wages below the value
of labour-power and getting engaged in informal sectors which is being expanded
due to neoliberal urbanization, and thus the agricultural labourers are coming
under the purview of formal subsumption to capital. The technological inputs in
the agriculturally and industrially developed Indian states are drawing the
rural wage labourers under the real subsumption to capital. There is also a
third category of large number of small peasants. Marx, in his letters to Vera
Zasulich, pointed out the hybrid form of subsumption of labour to capital in
the case of pre-revolutionary Russian peasant communes and observed that the
survival of these communes were dependent on the occurrence of Russian
revolution. The Indian small peasants are largely engaged in commodity
production and send their products to the market through marketing chain which
is rapidly being brought under the control of global corporate giants entering
the retail market and agribusiness. The small peasants engaged in commodity
production are actually paying their own wages from the small portion of
surplus they can be able to accumulate. The survival of these small peasants is
also dependent on Indian revolution that will usher in delinking of
agricultural economy from the clasp of the global corporate and their Indian
compradors. Due to the dominance of global corporate capital, the landlord
capitalists in the agriculturally developed states and the peasant capitalists
in the industrially developed states can also garner little control over
production process to accumulate surplus to reinvest. Thus all the rural
classes have a score to settle with the global corporate capital and their
Indian compradors, be it the question of wages, delinking of economy from the
control of global corporate capital for capital accumulation and re-investment
or preservation of natural resources and ecological balances from the onslaught
of primitive accumulation. The changing dynamics of rural class relations has
also put the institution of patriarchy into intense questioning. A programme
that encompasses all these factors to build a mass struggle against corporate
plunder may rejuvenate the Naxalite movement once again.